Friday, August 1, 2008

A New Shakespeare-Related Novel

Winfield, Jess. My Name is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare. New York: Twelve, 2008.
The New York Times just reviewed—or, rather, its podcast just interviewed the author of—a new novel related to Shakespeare.

All I know about it I learned from the New York Times Book Review podcast. The author is one of the founding members of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, and the podcast and the review stress the novel's comic elements.

It also appears that a secretly-Catholic and State-persecuted Shakespeare is assumed. As Shakespeare's Catholicism / Protestantism / Agnosticism / Atheism / Puritanism / et ceteraism has been at the forefront of the scholarly debate in recent years, it will be quite interesting to explore its implications in this novel.

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Bardfilmis normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilmis a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:

KJ is a professor of English and Literature at a small Christian liberal arts college. In addition to courses entitled “Shakespeare” and “Introduction to Shakespeare,” he teaches a course called “Shakespeare and Film.” Recently, he developed a course titled “Modern Shakespearean Fiction.” Shakespeare is also integrated into nearly all his other courses, including courses on the Literature of Food and the Literature of Humor. Additionally, he is the author of Bardfilm: The Shakespeare and Film Microblog. But you may have known that already.